As I go to bed tonight my heart is racing and sleep is the last thing I have on my mind. In only a few more days I will be completing the marathon of my dreams. I truly have so many things to be grateful for in my life and my life shows me almost on a daily basis now exactly what those things are. The funny thing is looking back, it always has shown me only I have never noticed, but I see it clear as day now.
“The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.”
~Ralph Blum
This evening my son had his second grade program at school. I ran into an old friend of mine who I haven’t seen in quite some time. This friend was my best friend when I was involved in my car accident as a child. She hugged me tightly and said to me I am so proud of you Stephanie. In the moment of hearing her say that, all my mind could see was the vision of Stephanie sitting in that wheel chair. But I didn’t feel sad at all. I felt proud and I looked brightly at her and said thank you so much for saying that.
With this big event approaching me I have been taking a look back on its true essence. I took a walk down to my Mom’s last weekend and went through the box of my hospital memorabilia I kept from 1993. I do not go through that box hardly ever, it brings back memories of times I have tried to forget because somehow I felt shame in it. I found pictures, letters, journals, even hospital forms, and directions of how to take care of me written out by nurses in the hospital. Looking through that box last weekend gave me so much clarity on the whole mission I have been on through these years…
Throughout this journey to Boston I’ve cultivated true knowledge of life, but most importantly on its true meaning. I talk all the time to my running coach about this and say this journey has been like the pealing back of an onion’s layers. Layers of my true self and I’ve come a full circle back to where it all began with everything and going through that box the other day gave me even more of a realization of this. There hasn’t been a day go by in the past 2 years I haven’t had some sort of omen directing me back to that little girl in the wheel chair… I have recalled memories of when I came out of a coma and things I even told my mom. I had a conversation with a friend just the other day and I told him that there were sequences of my life over the past 2 years that would make his hair stand on ends if I told him of them. And I am not kidding when I say I have had so many true awakenings to what life is truly all about, and this is the true essence of what my running dream has been about all along! What I am most proud of through these years is standing tall to the monsters of my past and finding there is no shame in any of this and that these obstacles that have always tried to derail this dream of mine have only been there to ignite my fire…
“That I feed the hungry, forgive an insult, and love my enemy…. these are great virtues.
But what if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me, and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness; that I myself am the enemy who must be loved? What then?” ~Carl Jung
I want to end this entry by saying through this journey the most important knowledge I cultivated is this: I am Stephanie M. Freeman, a mother, a runner, but must importantly I am a miracle! I lived 2 months of my life in a coma, and on a respirator scratching to survive. I had to learn to walk, talk, eat, and function again as a normal child and in only a few more days I will be crossing the finish line of my dreams! I was given a second chance in life to show every one we have a superpower inside of us all. I call this “Staying Power”! Persistence speaks loudest!!!
Never Give Up, Never Give In, Never Stop Trying , Never EVER Give Up!!!!
